


who told thee that thou wast naked?

by libraralien



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst, Memories, Multi, POV Multiple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-11
Updated: 2018-01-11
Packaged: 2019-03-03 10:01:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13338882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/libraralien/pseuds/libraralien
Summary: Three sad people think about a happier time.





	who told thee that thou wast naked?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [roguefaerie (samidha)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/samidha/gifts).



_I  
And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.  
Genesis 2:25_

Sometimes, Miranda felt her unhappiness had no bounds, that it's depths were unplumbed and that the misery of her life in Nassau had no end. She had James, sometimes, but more and more even when she had James, she had Flint. She was a strong woman, always looking forward, trying to improve her life, to find as most joy as possible, but sometimes she afforded herself a degree of melancholy at her lot. And when this happened, whether she wanted to or not, she would often reflect on happier times. The happiest time had been when they were truly three, she and James and Thomas, when they had been utterly unified in their joy with one another. It had been brief, and had led into her present memory, but she suspected that few people had had what the three of them had shared.

Of course, she and Thomas had been happy together, before James, there was no doubt about that. They both felt comfortable in the strength for their love for one another. James had elevated their love to paradise, but today she was furious with him, so she could scarcely even think about their past happiness. So she thought about Thomas.  
Once James had asked her how their marriage came to be such, that is, how the two of them came to understand that they would both have lovers outside their marriage, as he had been adorably dumb-struck. Their marriage had been arranged. She had always suspected that both their families had felt they were getting away with something when they married the two of them off. Thomas overworked himself, spent much time away from home, was argumentative, and seemed largely disinterested in attempted to charm women. Miranda was willful, literate, also argumentative, and had been surrounded by rumors of sexual indiscretions since her teenage years. In short, both had been deemed difficult and were thus foisted off on one another. Miranda's father had hoped that a principled and headstrong man would temper her somewhat, but it turned out she and Thomas only spurned one another one and feel deeply, powerfully in love quickly.

However, Thomas had avoided their wedding bed after their marriage. At first, he had told her or she had told herself that he was overtired from working too hard or that his mind was elsewhere. Eventually she came to the only conclusion that seemed possible: that although he enjoyed her company and was trying his best to be a loving husband, that he was disgusted by her. He had heard rumor of her youthful indiscretions (with sons of Lords, with stable boys, with tutors - there were many stories, some true, some not) and could not bare to touch her, bespoiled as she was. She confronted him about it, angry, confessing what was true, denying what was not. It was a confrontation borne out of a fit of emotion, not knowing what else she could do about a husband who refused to take her in bed, especially when she thought there had been such love between them, but it was for the best. He confessed to her everything, why he felt he could not make love to her like she wished, but that he did love her, deeply. Eventually they decided that they both would discreetly have other men, other lovers.  
Other men may have occupied their beds, but it was Thomas who would read to her in the study, Thomas who she made a home with, Thomas who comforted her when she was distressed or ill, Thomas who shared his life with her. And so it went on like this for years and they were happy. And then James came into their lives, and they knew bliss.

_II  
And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.  
Genesis 3:6_

There was precious little time or energy for introspection in Flint's life, at least while at sea. But when there was time, when everything seemed to be going according to plan for the moment, when there was nothing left to do but to sail the course, he found he had little to do but fall into his own thoughts. His cultivated sense of privacy and mystery kept any men on the ship from ever considering him something like a friend. He could read, but every book he had was heavy with memories, and the outcome would be that he would end up simmering in his own thoughts regardless.  


He was cautious, but he found value in sometimes revisiting memories of his life before he was Flint. He needed to be Flint, he knew, but at the same time he feared losing the part of him that had existed before. Not many people could reflect back on their own birth, he mused, but he could pinpoint the moment in Miranda's arms, both full of fresh despair, that he had decided they would sail to Nassau and the part of him that would become Flint had entered into him, into the world.  


He would be all but unrecognizable to his old self now. But then again, the person he became with Miranda and Thomas had been almost unrecognizable to his old self at the time. It was impossible for him to say where one's influence began and one ended, Thomas and Miranda, or who he had fallen in love with first, intertwined as they were. He had met Thomas first, but his affair, which seemed such a cheap word for what they had, had come first. His friendship with Thomas had allowed him to meet Miranda and he became closer to Thomas due to his relationship with Miranda. He could never have kissed Thomas, made love to Thomas, if Miranda had not shaped him first.  


The moments where he moved into his identity as Flint has been so definite, so harring: Thomas's death, Gates asking him his name; but the himself he had become with the Hamiltons had been so gradual, he had been so lost in the paradise of it, he could hardly name any one moment of it. Had it began when he met Thomas that day the admiralty had sent him? Or had it begun when Miranda intruded into his room, and then climbed atop him in her carriage? Or in Thomas's study, over long hours of discussion of the Pirate Problem? Or had it begun at dinner, when Thomas had kissed him? It was as if he had hardly lived at all before them, at least not significantly. And when their time together had come to an end, rather than return to his previous unborn state, he had turned into another person entirely. 

_III  
Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.  
Genesis 3:23_

At first, it had hurt Thomas too much to think about the life he had lost. But slowly, as the days turned to weeks to months to years, those memories were all he had. His life now was not the meanest life he know a man could have: he performed labor day in and day out, but was allowed enough food and rest; he had companionship of the other men, but not love; he had the necessities of life, but few comforts. So now, the pain of loss dulled by the years, he spent days lost in his memories while he worked in the fields. He also feared that if he did not revisit his memories, they would dull, the details would fade, and the only memories he would have would be of his life now. 

Today he was thinking about James, as he often was. He always tried to think about specific moments, to keep them from slipping away. He often revisited the big moments, the day they first met, their first kiss at the dinner table, the first time they had made love. It was the small moments he wanted to hold onto even tighter. He thought about laying in James's bed, reading to him after they had spent a lazy afternoon fucking. He thought about a particular conversation they had had one afternoon on the nature of sin. He thought about the time he had spent fretting over what to inscribe in a book he was gifting James, and then James's face upon reading it. These memories were all he had now, he thought, wiping the sweat from his brow. 

Over the years he'd had time to have every feeling about James. Some days he felt guilt, that he had dragged James into something from which there was no coming back, that Miranda had been right, that he had been foolish to think they could get away with happiness forever. Had they blamed him? They would not have been wrong to, but they had all had a part, and he had never blamed James, certainly not Miranda. 

Some days, rebelliously, he couldn't bring himself to regret anything. Their affair had been ruinous yes, but had it been wrong? He had never felt that to be true. Sometimes James had wrestled with that thought when they had been together, but never Thomas. Both him and Miranda had longed to see James join them in their happiness, to be unclouded by shame. They had been successful in that at least. 

Nobody had ever told him what had become of James. He assumed he was hanged. He had made peace with the fact he would never see him again, or Miranda for that matter. Miranda may have escaped, to somewhere on the continent perhaps. He hoped she was happy.


End file.
